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A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF ASHINTOSHRINE
by John K. Nelson (Seattle and London: University of Washington Pns,1996) JAPANESE ENCOUNTERS WITH POSTMODERNITY by Yoshio Sugimoto and Johann P. Arnason (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1995)
While Nelson is not the first to argue that Shinto-based institutions and practices "lie at the core of Japanese culture, society and character," he succeeds in testing this thesis against the insights offered by a scrutiny of the calendrical cycle of rituals performed in one central Shinto shrine - Suwa Jinja - in one Japanese city - Nagasaki. In so doing he is careful to distinguish what he calls shrine Shinto from State Shinto, yet he is not naive in viewing the former as without political context. Sociologically, Nelson is close to a Geertzian view of religion as a "system of symbols," just as he is beholden to the Hobsbawm and Ranger view of tradition as culture under active construction of "invented tradition."
Founded in 1625 as part of a social engineering experiment on the part of the Bakafu to neutralise the perceived malevolent intentions of the Christian missions which then made Nagasaki a little Rome or more accurately a little Manila, Suwa Jinja has survived over long time, albeit "full of multiple interpretations."- While the fortunes of the Shrine have waxed and waned over time, there is no question that the fortune of Suwa Jinja to survive the atomic bombing of the city only enhanced the propitiary value of the three Kami or Gods it enshrines in the minds of the populace of the devastated city. Perhaps as part of a mass healing or catharsis within a year of the bombing the occupation authorities sanctioned the revival of the local Nagasaki matsuri or festival - Kunchi - otherwise suppressed during the war years, but the roots of which go back in hoary time. In fact the mass celebration of Kunchi in Nagasaki whereupon the Kami are ported around the town represents the high point in the calendar of Suwa Jinja and really the climax of any study on this subject.
Based on field work and observation conducted in 1994, Nelson commences his discussion of Suwa Jinja's rituals in the Spring, beginning of the new agricultural cycle and...